Start-Up Outlines Asteroid-Mining Strategy

By

Amir Efrati

Updated April 24, 2012 7:29 p.m. ET

SEATTLE—A start-up with high-profile backers on Tuesday unveiled its plan to send robotic spacecraft to remotely mine asteroids, a highly ambitious effort aimed at opening up a new frontier in space exploration.

A start-up with high-profile backers unveiled its plan to send robotic spacecraft to remotely mine asteroids, an ambitious effort aimed at opening up a new frontier in space exploration. Don Clark has details on The News Hub. Photo: Getty Images.

At an event at the Seattle Museum of Flight, a group that included former National Aeronautics and Space Administration officials unveiled Planetary Resources Inc. and said it is developing a "low-cost" series of spacecraft to prospect and mine "near-Earth" asteroids for water and metals, and thus bring "the natural resources of space within humanity's economic sphere of influence."

The solar system is "full of resources, and we can bring that back to humanity," said Planetary Resources co-founder
Peter Diamandis,
who helped start the X-Prize competition to spur nongovernmental space flight.

The company said it expects to launch its first spacecraft to low-Earth orbit—between 100 and 1,000 miles above the Earth's surface—within two years, in what would be a prelude to sending spacecraft to prospect and mine asteroids.

The company, which was founded three years ago but remained secret until last week, said it could take a decade to finish prospecting, or identifying the best candidates for mining.

Eric Anderson,
a co-founder, declined to say how much money the start-up has raised. But he said that the company's spacecraft could essentially catch a ride on rockets that are scheduled to be launched into space, thus bringing down the cost. He added that he believed it would take $25 million to $30 million to send a group of around six spacecraft to study an asteroid.

Chris Lewicki, former NASA Mars mission manager, is Planetary's president and chief engineer

Source: the company

Images: Mining Asteroids

A company rendering of the Leo space telescope it plans to use to help assess asteroids. Planetary Resources

Mr. Diamandis said Planetary will benefit from a new generation of wealthy, "risk-tolerant investors," some of whom have already invested heavily in commercial space trave.

Planetary Resources, which is based in the Seattle area, is backed by billionaires such as
Google
Inc.
Chief Executive
Larry Page
and other exploration proponents, including film director
James Cameron
.
It has more than 20 employees, but it is looking to eventually have between 50 and 100 who would be willing to "devote their lives" to the project.

Richard Binzel,
a professor of planetary science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an author of textbooks on asteroids, said that he agrees that asteroids will eventually be mined for resources and become "operational stepping stones" for manned voyages to planets like Mars, but the effort by Planetary Resources "may be many decades ahead of its time."

"We're trying to do something so audacious, and we might fail," said Mr. Anderson, who has been involved in commercial space-flight endeavors. "But we believe that attempting this and moving the needle in space is worth it."

Mr. Diamandis said a typical asteroid that's 265 feet in diameter could contain $100 billion of metals and have enough energy to power every shuttle that has ever traveled in space.

Scientists, including many researchers at NASA, believe mining asteroids is crucial to future space exploration because they may yield huge quantities of minerals that could be used to build components to house space explorers. Water is another key commodity: It could be separated into oxygen and hydrogen to help supply breathable air and make rocket propellant.

Earlier

Planetary Resources executives said that after reaching the first asteroid, the company would mine it for water, set up a fuel depot, and then mine the asteroid for iron and other metals. By establishing fuel depots, Planetary hopes to cut costs.

The company also hopes to bring some valuable materials back to Earth, including platinum, and it may try to capture a smaller asteroid and bring it into orbit around the moon so it can be studied closer to Earth.

Mr. Anderson said that Planetary has mining technology and is partnering with unnamed Earth-based mining companies and that it will soon test its methods on "asteroidal material" in its lab. It estimates about 1,500 asteroids are "energetically as easy to reach as the moon."

The company's president,
Chris Lewicki,
a former NASA official, has been developing a series of spacecraft called "Arkyd," starting with one that measures several feet long and will travel in low-earth orbit and spot asteroid targets. Future Arkyd spacecraft will try to reach asteroids and, in theory, be able to mine them. Mr. Lewicki said the company planned to send "swarms," or groups of about six spacecraft, to near-earth asteroids.

The company said it was encouraged by the Japan space agency's successful asteroid-probing mission several years ago in which a small amount of the asteroid was brought back to earth. NASA is working on a similar mission, which is set to launch in 2016.

On Tuesday a NASA spokesman said Planetary "aligns well with our national space policies and goals," adding that "we will certainly look to take advantage of private-sector resources and data."

NASA has been pulling back from unmanned missions in the solar system because of its commitment to manned missions and congressional budget cuts. European space agencies are also confronting their own budget crunches on existing projects.

"The commercial sector can accept failures in ways governments cannot," said
Tom Jones,
a former NASA astronaut who is a Planetary adviser.

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